Happy Days: Twilight Zone
by Thor2000
Summary: Joanie has entered the Twilight Zone; she's having visions and reflections of life from the Eighties and the Nineties and Richie and the gang think she's losing it as her personality keeps hopping time periods.
1. Chapter 1

Halloween was coming up and the teenager's local hang-out was strung up with orange and black streamers, cartoonish creatures and grinning skeletons on cardboard in the windows, both fake and actual pumpkins in abundance and the younger kids in droves running around in their cheap plastic masks and more expensive rubber masks. The rubber masks were more popular, but could cost as much as fifty cents in this economy. That was a bit out of the range of kids who only received as much as fifteen cents for their allowance. The older kids often had to get after school jobs to cover their expenses, either waiting tables or working in garages. Some kids like Richie Cunningham was fortunate to have a dad who owned his own business. His dad got him his first car; an old 1948 Studebaker while dad got himself a 1957 Ford Station Wagon right off the line. It was a good time to have one's business. Roosevelt had helped the country to survive the last depression, Truman recovered the country from the last war and Eisenhower was a man the whole country rallied behind. The last president to have been a major military leader was Grant, but that was only three generations earlier. On the eve of the 1958 Fall Festival, the Dearborn suburb of Milwaukee was pushing forward to the future.

At Arnold's Drive-In, a restaurant drive-in down the street from Jefferson High School at the corner of Maple and First Streets, Richie and his best friends were on the makeshift stage playing their music. They knew all the music from all big stars of the time from Bobby Darin to Elvis Presley, but their repertoire was very limited. They only had about five to eight songs they could play very well. On the piano, Ralph grinned and mugged with funny faces to his friends and the girls near him trying to be popular while Richie with his red hair and All-American looks wailed on the saxophone to Potsie Webber on the guitar. Potsie had supposedly got his name from his father because all he could make from clay were pots. One day, Ralph heard Warren's dad call him "potsy," and before anyone knew it, everyone at Jefferson was still calling him "Potsie." It was still a long time ago, and the guys were all now in college, but he was still known as Potsie. While he might not be known as Warren, he had an incredible singing voice even if he failed at everything else he did.

"Guys, I need a break." He turned to his buddies. "All this singing is making my voice dry out."

"Your head is dried out…" Ralph poked fun at him.

"We'll take a break." Richie acted as the unofficial leader of the group, but only because he seemed the most responsible out of them. Their schoolmates gave them a light round of cheers and claps for the music, but they would not break to give the guys their usual table at the middle of the room. Instead the guys noticed two booths away near the randomly used jukebox. Some of the local girls started playing the latest Elvis Presley song as the guys rested. Richie signaled to Myrna the waitress to bring them burgers and drinks. As they took a break, their extended friends parted for their seats to reveal everyone's best friend. Clad in the leather jacket, white shirt, blue jeans and boots, Arthur Fonzarelli was their local celebrity, a former hood who had turned straight to work with the police to clean up the neighborhood and keep it that way. He fixed everyone's cars, he had ties to just about anything legitimate and despite being a high school dropout, he was the teenage voice of reason among the kids. He also had a reputation as a lover with girlfriend after girlfriend. Girls came to Arnold's to meet him; guys came to meet the girls. Secure and sure of himself, he came in with a beautiful busty brunette on his arm, gave her a kiss before she met her friends and glided across the room to Richie, his best friend.

"Richie," Fonzie came up and leaned in with his boot on the seat. "Six tickets, seventh roll, Ritchie Valens…"

"You got the tickets!" The guys cheered.

"Fonzie, you are so cool!"

"How much?" Potsie asked the question. Blatantly obvious, he sat back from unwittingly offending the Fonz.

"Five bucks, a piece…"

"It's worth it." The guys pulled out their wallets just as Arnold Nakamura came from the kitchen to deliver their burgers, fries and drinks. The Japanese businessman reportedly left Japan just after World War Two to run a business in what he called the land of opportunity. He had a nice business as long as the kids continued coming round, but sometimes he got a bit into their business.

"Why you guys sit down?" He spoke in his stilted Asian understanding of English. "If you guys no play, there no jumping around. No jumping around, no one get hungry. No hungry, I no have business."

"Arnold, you don't pay us." Ralph pointed out.

"What you talk about don't pay?" Arnold looked back at them. "I pay you in hamburgers. You want pay, I stop giving you free hamburgers."

"We'll take the hamburgers." The guys chorused. Fonzie salted and ate from Potsie's French Fries. Fonzie grinned at Arnold's ethics and nodded his head in acknowledging him.

"Another thing…" Fonzie agreed. "I need a favor." He sipped Potsie's soda. "I'm heading out of town to work at a demolition derby. I need you guys to help Jesse out for me."

"Fonzie…" Richie reacted a bit unprepared. The guys were hesitant. "What kind of work does Jesse need?"

"Lawn mowing, bushes trimmed, haul some stuff off… You know, yard stuff." He looked at them. "The kind of stuff I don't do."

"What if we do a lousy job?"

"Fonzie…" The busty brunette returned to him. "Are these the guys to clean up my yard?"

"And we'll do a really good job!" Richie and the guys suddenly volunteered. She was incredible! She had long dark hair, soft brown eyes and the sort of incredible figure that only movie stars had. Fonzie rose to take her by the waist and guide her to his usual table on the end of the row of booths. The guys were stunned. Only Richie among them had a serious girlfriend of his own, but as cute and winsome as she was, she compared to Jesse in a different way. Amidst subtle laughs and buried male fantasies, they marveled at how the Fonz got these girls and finished up their snack. They rose to return to the platform in the corner against the kitchen. Ready to play again, they turned to huddle about playing a different song. Richie liked the Big Bopper, but Potsie wanted to try Fats Domino. Ralph preferred anything with a beat. Mostly they followed Richie's lead.

"Richie…" There came a voice that make the All-American boy tense up. He turned round to his sister in the pink sweater and light blue skirt coming in past the kitchen entrance. Her hair pulled tight into a ponytail, Joanie Cunningham was irresistibly cute with big blue eyes and rosy cheeks with a figure quickening into womanhood. All the guys in high school noticed her, but to Richie, she was the little sister from hell with a big mouth and an evil mind. She was constantly in his business, sneaking up on him and his girl, taking what she needed from his room without asking and reporting everything he did to their parents. Every time he heard her voice, there was a price to pay…

"What do you want, Lizzie Borden?" Richie looked down from the bandstand, Ralph and Potsie leaning in to back him up if necessary.

"Dad wants you to go home and rake the leaves like you promised." She reminded him. "He says if you don't, you're grounded for the weekend."

"Joanie…" Richie smirked, chuckled as he as looked to his buddies and looked back to her. "I'm in college. They can't ground me as if I was a little kid."

"He can take away your car!"

"Guys, I got to rake those leaves!" Richie pulled the strap of his saxophone off over his head before stepping off the stage.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" Both Potsie and Ralph began reacting as Ralph planned the solution. "Richie, wait…" He turned to the bratty sister grinning to her friends. "Okay, Lucrezia Borgia…" He looked back at Richie with a wry grin as Joanna pictured her curled up fist in his stupid face. "We need Richie here. What's it going to take for you to go get someone else to rake those leaves?"

"Well," Joanie hesitated, posed a bit in her poodle skirt and white shoes with a twist of her hips and looked back. "You can let me sing with the band."

"No, not going to happen, never in this lifetime…" The guys mumbled over each other.

"Did I mention grounded?"

"She does have a nice singing voice." Potsie gave in first, helped hoist Richie's little sister up on stage and backed up a bit. Elvis was ending on the jukebox in the corner, and Joanie was beaming ear to ear to be singing on stage. Richie set aside his saxophone for his guitar and plugged it in to play. Ralph rolled his eyes and turned begrudgingly to his piano. Joanie lightly giggled as if she were thirteen again. She knew Richie was annoyed by her slipping into his world through the cracks but to her, she was grown up alongside him. She could pretend to be one of the older kids. She could be twenty-years-old at least in her mind and be a part of his world with him. She could be his peer instead of just his older sister.

"One song." Richie held his first finger up to her.

"Three!"

"It could be none."

"One a day for a week?"

"Fair enough…" Richie took his place behind her. Her grin lighting up as bright as the sun, Joanie looked to her friends and schoolmates gathering round to encourage her. She stood at the microphone in Potsie's regular place as felt a little dizzy, closing her eyes and trying to shrug it off. Her head felt lighter, her hands tingled from within. Her left hand reached up and palmed her hair back as her demeanor changed. Her movements slowed, her eyes lit up and she took a defiant stance at the microphone.

"What do you want to sing?" Richie asked.

"Just play…" Her voice sounded different as the guys started playing a recent Sandra Dee song. Richie looked to her to start. She missed her mark as couples forms and swayed to the soft romantic song. Potsie looked at the brunette cutie and wondered if she had stage fright. Joanie's hand glided over the microphone as if she were worshipping it. When she completed shaping the air around it, the room twinged as the lights flicked in unison and another sound came from behind her in the form of more musical sounds from the restaurant speakers.

"Strike a pose…" Joanie whispered provocatively into the microphone. Her brother strummed his guitar and looked at her.

"Strike a pose…" Joanie said it again a bit more defiantly. "Vogue…" She whispered to the music.

"_Look around…everywhere you turn is heartache_…" She started singing lyrics to a song in her head. "_It's everywhere that you go_…"

Her friends and classmates started slow dancing to this new love song.

"_You try everything you can to escape the pain of life that you know_…"

"_Life that you know_…" Girls at a nearby table chimed in behind her.

"_When all else fails and you long to be, something better than you are today_…" Joanie looked out from a trance across the room of teenage couples dancing romantically in each other's arms. "_I know a place where you can get away. It's called a dance floor, and here's what it's for so, come on, Vogue. Let your body move to the music. Hey, hey, hey_…"

The room liked Joanie's song. The dance moves were both romantic and fun combining the slow grace of Sandra Dee with the pulse of Bill Haley. Richie and Potsie kept playing not knowing what they were playing. Joanie seemed to be making up with the music they created. In the kitchen, Arnold was bouncing to the beat as he chopped tomatoes. Clarence was dancing and swaying as he fried burgers. The kids out in their cars in the parking lot raced in to meet the hot new singer and were stunned to see Richie's little singer with the hot voice.

"_Come on and Vogue. Let your body go with the flow_…." Her voice honeyed and seductive, she seemed to be casting a spell over the room with her eloquent gestures and twisting graceful movements of her hands. "_It makes no difference if you're black or white, if you're a boy or a girl. If the music's pumping it will give you life. You're a superstar! Yes, that's what you are, you know it_."

"Richie?" Potsie leaned over to him.

"Just go with it." Richie answered.

"_Vogue_…" Joanie gasped seductively. Her body swaying up and down as she seemingly reawakened her classmates and audience into her own personal coven. "_Greta Garbo and Monroe, Dietrich and DiMaggio_…" Her voice developed a frightening vibration as if she were in a trance but still in tune to the music. "_Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean on the cover of a magazine… Grace Kelly, Harlow Jean… picture of a beauty queen. Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers dance on air. They had style, they had grace; Rita Hayworth gave good face_…

"_Lauren, Katherine, Lana too, Bette Davis… we love you. Ladies with an attitude, fellows that were in the mood. Don't just stand there, let's get to it, strike a pose, there's nothing to it. Vogue_…"

Ralph found himself playing notes he'd never heard but somehow knew. It was as if he'd heard the song once, but from where?

"_Ooooo, you've got to let your body move to the music_." Joanie spun round once behind the microphone as if she were a professional entertainer and caught the microphone again. "_Ooooo, you've got to just let your body go with the flow. Oooo, you've got to… Vogue_." She came to a sudden stop with the music, breathing heavily, stunned and looked back at her brother and friends in shock. Was that just her?! The gang in Arnold's Restaurant had loved it. They cheered loudly at the invocative and innovative new sound.

"Where did you get that song?!" Richie wrapped his hand over the microphone and confronted his little sister.

"I don't know!" Joanie was terrified and stunned. "That wasn't me!" She looked at him scared and worried, her eyes widened from fear. Her feet jumped off the platform and she raced from guys reaching to her and her female classmates, her feet racing from the restaurant and drive-in to carry her home as fast as she could. Left behind, Richie started after her then looked back to his friends. Ralph's hands were trembling a bit. Potsie had hurried pulled off his guitar unsure how he got that new music out of it. Across the room, Fonzie sat up on the back of his booth and gave them a look to get their attention. He reached out if but only to pull Richie close like a brother. Around them the room was grinning and excited to have experienced something new.

"Where did Shortcake learn that song?" He asked the guys.

"Fonz…" Richie was confused. "Where did we learn that song?!"

"It felt like I already knew it." Ralph answered. "It was as if I always knew it."

"Is it just me or did I hear other music from the sound system?" Potsie was even a bit unnerved.

"Guys, question…" Fonzie looked up to them with that solid look of authority. "Where did the sounds of those other instruments come from?" The guys looked back to the stage looking for an answer. They had created that music, but was there something else with them. It was almost as if something had taken control of them, but what could it have been? Beyond them, a figure unique to the teen hangout sat in a corner booth out of the way of the young adults and postured with his cigarette. Clad in a clean suit and loosened tie, he lowered his newspaper, sipped his coffee and tapped out his cigarette to watch the events unfold. He furrowed his eyebrows a bit, cleared his throat and looked toward unseen parties he envisioned watching him.

"An interesting question and one which can be answered…" He spoke aloud to invisible listeners. "How does a teenage girl in the innocence that was the late 1950s know a song at least forty years and two generations after her time well before her own children and her children's children. Submitted for your approval, Joanna Louise Cunningham, eighteen years old, a lovely and effervescent student at Jefferson High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Young Miss Cunningham has just tasted the ambrosia of immortality, grasped upon the brass ring and peered into another world, which she does not understand. It's a vision of a world that both excites her and terrifies her. She has just looked into… The Twilight Zone…"


	2. Chapter 2

2

It was October 18, 1959. Eisenhower was in office, and although everyone agreed they liked Ike, everyone loved Lucy. Milton Berle was voted the funniest man on television by anyone who actually owned a TV. The first highways were being laid across the country, which nervously anticipated Russia would bomb the United States and start off World War Three. In the small Oakhurst division of Milwaukee, kids rode their bikes freely enjoying their freedoms before heading off to school. Most teens were experimenting with their freedoms by getting jobs and buying their first cars. It was still the American Dream to own one's house and make payments on it. Most people still trusted the government, Bobby Darin was the favorite on the radio, and the biggest fear after the Cold War was the local street gang in the more destitute parts of town, but most people did not head into those areas. Fathers went to their jobs, mothers took care of the homes and teenagers having children while in school was unheard of in this day and age. The drug culture was still several years away in the future. America was nearly innocent before everything broke wide open.

"We got a letter from Chuck!" Mother and PTA member Marion Cunningham raced from the mailbox and through kitchen waving a letter for her husband.

"Where is that idiot son of mine now?" Howard looked round grinning satirically before sipping his coffee. "I swear… sometimes I think we only have two kids."

"He's in some place called Madagascar." Marion was so excited to finally be getting a letter from her firstborn. "I think that's south of Mexico."

"Way south and quite a bit west…" Howard humored her. "Is he coming home for Christmas this time?"

"He didn't say." Marion sat down at the dinner table. "He says he is up for Lieutenant and has to study for the officer's exam. He's in charge of the galley on a submarine. What's a galley?"

"It's the kitchen."

"Why don't they just call it a kitchen?"

"I don't know, they just do…" Howard sat and perused the mail. No bills for once… just his Reader's Digest and a letter from his cousin in Chicago. He took the letter and started to open it, but then he heard the front door opening and closing and then saw the fleeting image of his daughter rushing inside and racing up the staircase in fright. She didn't stop once. She came inside and raced up the stairs as if the devil was on her heels. Howard shared a look with his wife who looked concerned back to him.

"Joanie?" Marion felt the pangs of a worried mother and lightly hurried behind her to check on her. Setting the mail aside, he rose a bit slower to be more of a responsible father and followed after his wife and daughter. The girl had the bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway between the guest bedroom and her brother's room. Marion was at the door lightly knocking.

"Joanie…" She rapped again. "Joanie? Are you okay, sweetheart?"

"I'm okay…" Joanie's vague voice came through the door.

"Joanie, did Jenny Piccolo say something to hurt your feelings?" Her father asked.

"No…" The young girl murmured again.

"Howard, break the door down." Marion made a request of her husband.

"Break the… Break the door down? Are you crazy?" He reached over to see if it was locked. It wasn't. A smile to his wife, he slowly pushed the door open. "Joanie, honey, are you decent?" He pushed it wider to the sign of old 45 records on the wall, posters of pop stars and her bureau covered with her cosmetics and stuffed animals. The room was a little messy with clothes and objects around amidst fast food wrappers and old shopping bags. Sitting on the floor against the bed with her back to the door, he was still in that transitional phase of being a young girl trying to be an adult. In her hands, she looked at her old stuffed bear, trying to revert to her youth by holding it for support.

"Joanie, honey," Marion sat at the foot of the bed and coaxed her daughter up off the floor. "You charged into the house so fast I thought something was bothering you. What wrong, sweetheart?"

"Joanie, please…" Howard rubbed his brow with his fingertips as his daughter looked up to him, backed up and ascended up into her mother's arms to sit at the edge of the bed. "If anything's wrong, we want to help."

"Well…" The rosy-cheeked cutie was oddly reserved and hesitant. Her hands were shaking a bit. Her body was trembling. "Something happened at Arnold's…"

"Did Richie and his friends say something that hurt your feelings?" Marion asked.

"No." The girl was reticent to describe it. "I… I… Richie let me sing with the guys…"

"Oh honey," Marion pulled her close. "Stage fright is nothing to be ashamed of." She kissed her little girl. "We all get a little scared when we get in front of a lot of people. You just have to…"

"Marion…" Howard sighed a bit and stopped her. "Would you let our daughter talk?"

"Oh, yes," Marion turned to her daughter. "As you were saying, dear…"

"Well, as I was saying…" Joanie jumped up with her skirt swishing a bit. "Richie let me sing with the guys, and I was so excited to do it, but then… something happened, and the next thing I knew, I was singing, but… it wasn't me. I mean, it was me, but it wasn't. It was as if… someone else was there. In my body… I… I couldn't control myself. I was singing a song I never heard of…" She had a confused and frightened look at herself. Turning to her mirror, she looked at her reflection uncertain if she knew herself. Her mother drew quiet. Her father started to speak then changed his mind to scratch his head.

"Howard, she's becoming just like your niece, Casey…" Marion spoke under breath. Having heard her, Joanie rolled her eyes a bit embarrassed.

"My brother's kid thinks elves live in her closet." Her husband tried to be a caring father. "Joanie, look…" Her took his daughter round to sit by her mother. "I don't think I understand what you're talking about, but it sounds as if you just had stage fright."

"It wasn't stage fright!" Joanie was still amiss over the incident. "It wasn't me who sang that song."

"Then who was it dear?" Marion asked.

"Not me…"

"Joanie…" Her father postured, took a deep breath and slid his hands into his front pockets. "I'm not sure what it is you're trying to tell us, but… something obviously frightened you and as soon as you figure out what it was exactly, we'll do what ever you think will help. Just promise me, you won't go to Jenny Piccolo about it."

"Oh, yes, honey…" Marion agreed. "Don't go to Jenny Piccolo. That girl is crazy." She felt a light shiver. "Howard, I just felt a chill in the air. Is the heat on?"

"Of, course it's on…" Her husband nodded for her benefit and escorted her from the clothing-strewn, cup-littered, cleaning-needed girl's room. However, as he pulled his daughter's door shut, he also hesitated to tap the thermostat. Sitting on the bed on her pink skirt and blouse, Joanie sat for just a few seconds more before rising to her feet and standing before her mirror again. Her breath turned to mist in the air as she exhaled and she reached up to wipe the moisture off the glass. In the swipe of cleared glass, her eyes looked back to her, bluer than they'd ever been before. Using a wad of Kleenex to swab a view of her reflection, she lightly perused her face with her fingertips, tracing the outline of her flawless blue eyes around the rim of her eyebrow and upper cheek. Her ruby red lips parted to a waft of cold air pouring from her lungs and into the air. Her eyes closed and parted sensuously as she turned away, leaning backward to her bureau and scanning her room.

"Where's my laptop?" She asked herself.


	3. Chapter 3

3

Arthur Fonzarelli lived above the Cunningham's garage. As the Fonz, he replaced the role as Richie's role model in the absence of Chuck away in the Marines and avoiding his father. In the wayward son's absence, Marion had adopted Arthur in a way and had become the mother figure he had so missed in his life. Since he had stayed with the Cunninghams, he had mellowed… somewhat. He no longer ran with a gang or threatened to beat anyone up. He was Richie's best friend.

"Hey, Mrs. C…." He entered the house through the back door in the kitchen.

"Hello, Arthur…" Marion shined like the perennial Fifties housewife and turned to hand him his thermos filled with hot coffee. "Would you like some breakfast?"

"Of course…" He grinned to her. He loved her attention to his needs. "Is this one for me?" He saw a plate sitting on the counter between the counter and the breakfast table.

"No, that's Joanie's, and it's cold…" Marion turned back to the stove. "I'll scramble you your own eggs." She paused to take a deep breath and yell for her daughter again. "Joanie, come eat your breakfast!" Her voice annoyed her husband sitting and reading the morning newspaper at the breakfast table. Richie barely looked up from proofreading his homework at the table.

"I'm coming!" The voice of the delayed daughter sounded from the top floor and echoed down the staircase followed shortly behind by herself. Prancing from her room, the effervescent brunette grabbed a backpack filled with her schoolbooks and looked like any other female student going to school at the beginning of the Twenty-First century. However, this was the Late 1950s, and her attire was likely to cause some heads to turn toward her for all the wrong reasons. Instead of the sweater and skirt, she was dressed more casually in blue jeans that hugged her hips a bit lower than normal. Her feet scuffed the carpet in thick-soled sneakers of dark material with glowing light blue shoelaces and over her arm, she carried a leather jacket of her own. Her top was off-white in color and was a bit on the small side. It was like a t-shirt, but there wasn't enough to tuck into her jeans, a portion of her abdomen peeked out here and there as she moved, and the sleeves were practically nonexistent. She was showing a lot more skin that any other girl in the 1950s. Richie looked at her once as she dropped the backpack.

"Going camping?" He looked at her pack.

"Going shopping for a new personality?"

"Joanie!" Her father reacted. She had never smarted off to her brother before like that!

"Mrs. C…" Fonzie sipped a small glass of orange juice. "It looks like you shrunk Short Cake's shirt in the laundry."

"Oh, dear…" Marion looked over as Howard peeked over the newspaper. "I may have…" She actually didn't recall Joanie owning a shirt like that. "Here, you go, honey…" She gave her daughter her plate of scrambled eggs. "Eat your breakfast and then go up and change your shirt." Joanie looked over it and inspected it. It was the same breakfast she always got, scrambled eggs with sausage and potatoes with orange juice, but this morning, she was not interested.

"Mom…" Joanie took her usual seat at the breakfast table. "These eggs are cold."

"Well, you should have come down the first time I called."

"Why don't you just nuke it in the microwave?" Joanie inquired.

"Nuke it?" Her mother reacted confused.

"Microwave?" Her father responded just as confused. "What's a microwave?"

"It's a wavelength of energy." Richie recalled that word; it was from his high school textbook. "I read in a magazine that someday ovens using microwaves will be able to cook a lot more faster with microwaves. I guess Joanie read the same book."

"Yeah…" Joanie looked to Fonzie staring at her and tried laughing it off. "The same book…" She looked to her breakfast and picked at with her fork a second before poking in her pack by her chair.

"Richard…" Howard lowered the newspaper and folded it small enough to carry before commandeered the morning conversation next. "What are your plans for the weekend?"

"I don't know."

"I could use some help in the hardware store this weekend." He ate his scrambled eggs. "How about seventy-five cents an hour?"

"Sounds okay…." Richie thought of his friends. "Can Ralph and Potsie help too?"

"If they come, it's fifty cents an hour." His father looked at him. "And Potsie works in back where he's not around the customers. I've got this new idea to…" He heard distant music somewhere and paused. "Where's that music coming from?"

The three faces at the table turned to Joanie. She had tiny earpieces in her ears connected by wires to a small device on the table. At first, they thought it was a transistor radio, Richie had one in his room, but hers was even smaller. It looked like a fat credit card with a small dial on it and part of was lighted up from within, but it was so small and slender he could not see how anything could be in it. Joanie just sat there swaying and moving her head to the music in her ears. Her mind was a million miles away. She picked at her eggs, ate some of her fried potatoes but ignored the sausage on her plate before she noticed she was being watched. Looking up briefly, she noticed Fonzie was looking at her then Richie and her father. Her mother brought Fonzie his plate and stopped to look at her. Taking a cue from the faces on her, she pulled out her earphones.

"Wha-utt?" She tore the one syllable word into two syllables.

"Shortcake…" Fonzie spoke up. "What are you listening to?"

"Music…"

"On what? A postage stamp?" Richie picked up her new toy and turned it around and over. There were some names in the little window next to smaller images and song titles... Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber… His finger just grazed it and the list moved revealing recording artists he'd never heard of... Selena Gomez, Jay-Lo Green, Miley Cyrus, The Baha Men, Lady Gaga, Rhianna… Some force of nature called Rob Zombie. What the heck was this thing? His father wanted to see it, but Fonzie reached first.

"Did I miss something?" Fonzie was able to scroll the list up and down too. "Did transistor radios get smaller?"

"Fonzie…" Joanie chuckled in disbelief. "It's not a transistor radio. It's an I-Pod!" She lit up knowingly then showed him. "Look, I can record all my favorite songs and replay them in any order or as many times as I want."

"How can you record anything on something that small?"

"Microchips, dad! Duh!"

"Okay, I gotta ask…" Richie did a double take. "What kind of allowance are you giving this girl?"

"Joanie…" Howard started wondering if she was taking money from his wallet without his knowledge. He had heard of kids doing that, but Joanie was supposed to be different. She might have been distracted at times and childish around her brother, but she was not dishonest. He fretted a bit and passed his hand over his forehead a bit dismayed. "H-How did you get… Where did you get this thing?"

"With my allowance…" Joanie looked at them with their accusing faces. "At the mall…"

"What's a mall?"

"The shopping mall…" She honestly did not understand their confusion. "I go there with my friends to shop and drink cappuccinos and look at boys and…"

"Howard, what's a cappuccino?" Marion asked getting even more confused.

"I think it's a drink of some kind…" Her husband looked at her than back to his extra-sophisticated daughter. "Uh, Joanie, how can you afford to do this on the allowance I give you?"

"Actually, I think…." Joanie reached down a poked into her backpack. "…I've been budgeting myself quite well." She pulled out a wad of bills that had been folded over themselves. Richie made a gagging noise in surprise, and Fonzie's eyes widen in shock. Both her mother and father gasped in shock at what she was carrying, but then her father's stubby round fingers reached out and took the bills from her.

"Okay, I gotta ask…" Richie was almost hyperventilating. "What kind of allowance are you giving this girl?"

"Joanie, where did you get all this money?" Her father counted it out. "Twenty, forty, fifty… she's got to have almost five hundred dollars here. This is practically payment on the house!"

"Dad, this has got to be play money!" Richie looked at the bills. "Look, the paper's funny, the President's pictures are really huge, and…" He held it up to the light. "Look, there's some sort of ghost image to the left inside the bill!" Fonzie took the $50 and looked at it closer.

"Whoa! That's not the only thing! 2008, 2005, 2010…" He pointed at the dates. "Mr. C, as a guy who runs his own business like yourself, I'd swear this is real currency! Somehow, someway…" He slapped his hands in disbelief and pointed to Joanie. "Shortcake's been traveling to the future and coming back with cash and the music device."

"Joanie…" Marion placed her hand to her chest. "Have you been traveling to the future, sweetheart?"

"No, no, I swear…" The girl felt scared and confused. "I didn't know I had the money until a minute ago." She tried rationalizing it logically. "I knew about the I-Pod and the laptop, but I never knew…"

"Laptop?" Richie and Fonzie chorused together and looked at each other. "What's a laptop?"

"Oh…" Joanie turned round to her pack on the floor by her chair reached into it once more to pull out something that looked like a metal cutting board, but she casually popped the release and it opened up to a half typewriter and half television interior. On the screen was a floating picture on a digital cartoon image of gold symbols on blue. It wanted a password.

"This is my laptop." Joanie held it in her left arm as if she was a teenager from the Early Twenty-First Century and typed with her right hand. "I used it to do my homework last night." She typed in "Joanie" with her "Shortcake" password and immediately opened her AOL account.

"You've Got Mail…" A voice came out of it.

"Dad," Joanie was both excited and nervous at the same time. "It's got this site called Wikipedia that tells me everything about life, history and culture to the end of the century!" She paused with a light grin. "Did you know we're going to have an African-American President in 2010?"

"African-American?" Her father looked confused. Was that some sort of slang for black people?

"Okay…" Fonzie snapped his fingers and stepped back. "I am officially getting creeped-out-a-mundo here! We are officially entering the Twilight Zone here." He grabbed his coffee thermos from the window to the kitchen. "I don't know about you, but I'm getting out of here before Rod Serling comes through that front door and takes me with him." He headed for the back door to head out. "Joanie, my advice: keep the I-Pod and the cash but chuck the laptop! No one, but no one should know what happens in the future! I'm out. Whoa!" He closed the back door on himself and was off on his motorcycle.

"The entire future…." Howard looked from Fonzie back to his daughter. "In this one tiny little box?" He reached to look at his daughter's future gadget.

"No, dad…" Joanie grinned enjoying the attention. "The information is out on the World Wide Web. My lap top just lets me access it."

"Joanie…" Her mother was nervous about this device. "How do you know this?" Joanie started to answer then got confused.

"I don't know…" Joanie looked at her father examining her laptop. How did she know that? Did knowing this stuff somehow affect her mind? Was it changing her into a kid of the future? Was that how she knew that song at Arnolds and how to dress this way?

"Let's see if it can tell me what to invest in." Her father looked at the letters. It was like a typewriter that gave him answers from the future, but instead of paper, he looked at words and images and faces and strange icons. "Imagine! I can play the stock market with no risk at all!"

"Dad!" Richie was shocked. This was the man who taught him wrong from right. Even was wife was surprised!

"What the heck am I doing?" Looking at his son, Howard regained his normal personality and the choice to do the right thing. "Joanie, young lady, take this thing, that I-Pad thing…." He grabbed everything up and pushed it back to her. "And get it and everything else out of this house… especially the cash." He pulled his handkerchief out to wipe his head. "My God, do you realize that funny cash could get me in trouble for counterfeiting? Counterfeiting! Me!"

"Dad!" She laughed at him. He was being ridiculous. He'd just have to wait fifty years to spend it!

"Joanie…" Her brother came toward her. "It may be real in the future, but now, in the present, it's just funny money and pretty much worthless in our economy."

"What?" She looked to her mother. "Mom!"

"Joanie, just listen to your father…" Marion dropped into a chair distraught and flustered. "Just… go upstairs, put some modern clothes on, and…" She paused trying to think. "Please dear, just stay in this time."

"What? Well…" The girl backed up slowly. "Maybe… just maybe… I don't want to live in this time!" She screamed and turned for the staircase, charging up them angry, down the hall and slamming the door of her bedroom.


	4. Chapter 4

4

She never changed her shirt. She pulled her blue sweater on of it and grabbed the pack once more as she headed out of the house. Richie offered her ride to school with plans to pump her for details on how she was time traveling, but she just tilted her head back at him, snubbed his very existence and held her chest up as she popped her ear phones back into her ears and listened to the music that came out of them. Her brother followed her down to the end of the block, but then Ralph and Potsie jumped in to his car and he lost site of her on Sycamore heading up to the high school on Main Street. Leaving her brother behind to tell her story, she drifted along to the music in her ears.

"_You get the limo out front_…" Joanie was singing under breath on her way to school. "_Hot style, every shoe every color… Who would have thought that a girl like me would double as a super-star? You get the best of both worlds_…" Her head moved with cocky ego and proud defiance to the music. It was changing her from within. Her mind was changing with it. Maybe she belonged in the future. Maybe that's where she belonged. Sure, she'd lose her best friends, but she'd make new ones and there would be all sorts of new computerized gadgets to make her life and schoolwork much easier. It wasn't that she no longer cared for girls like Jennie Piccolo, but she was starting to believe she could do better.

Joanie sat in the back of her history class with her friends. Kelly Parker was one of those friends. She had known Joanie since they were in kindergarten. Kelly was dressed in a powder blue sweater with a bright pink skirt next to her with Vanessa Danvers, Michelle Presley and Amy Van Buren in nearly identical outfits. They wore the attire of the time, the sweaters with the large skirts and shoes with knee high socks. When Joanie had arrived at school dragging the back pack with the long handle and wheels, everyone had asked her if she'd been camping, but she just ignored them and went on with her routine. She sure could use a cappuccino right now. A cappuccino?

Casually looking up, Joanie looked out the room to the classroom. A girl in long blonde hair and walked up to the water fountain across from the door, pulled her long hair back behind one ear then bowed down and pressed her lips to the water, pulling into her lips for a drink. She was dressed in the oddest clothes. It looked like a short one-piece dress out of garish material – a fabric with psychedelic flower patterns all over it and lace ends at the end of the sleeves and a white collars. It was the most horrible dress she had seen, but she seemed to know Joanie. Their eyes made contact, and her classmate waved her out of the classroom.

"Miss Mansfield…" Joanie held her hand up to her teacher. "I'm needed in the hall."

"Five minutes…"

Joanie slipped out and around her desk as her classmates briefly looked up. Gliding out, Joanie still wondered how she knew this girl. Was she from another class? The sister of another classmate? She wondered about it as they came together.

"Joanie…" The girl took another brief sip of water from the fountain. She had long light blonde hair with individual curly strands framing her face and a face full of freckles. "My mom said Marcia and I could have a slumber party. I was really hoping you would like to come."

"A slumber party…" Joanie wasn't even sure who this was. A male classmate passed behind her in a dark gaudy shirt and striped pants with high heel boots. His hair was round and curly like a poodle. He passed by them wearing dark sunglasses. Sunglasses? In the school?

"That sounds cool." Joanie forced a nervous grin. "But who…"

"Hi, Jan…" Jan's sister, Marcia, came up behind them as other students passed them in the hall. "Hi, Joanie…." She turned to her locker and draped her long blonde back before turning the knob on her locker to her combination. "So, did you ask her if she's coming to the party?"

"I asked her."

Joanie looked around the hall. There were more and more classmates coming by her, all of them in more hideous clothes than the last. Marcia had a yellow sweater, but she wore it with a skirt that was way too short. An unshaved male student wore a black hat with a low brim and a cow leather vest with shredded strips hanging all over it. Multiple colors on the same attire, badly matched patterns, obnoxious new colors, it was a violation to the eyes. Where was it coming from?

"Joanie, I think Peter might have a crush on you."

"Peter?"

"Our brother…" Jan answered. "Unless of course, you're already seeing someone…"

"No, not right now…" Joanie looked up and saw a cute guy she liked. He had big brown eyes and a steely grin, but he had that same curly poodle top haircut and large eyebrows and clothing as if h had dressed in a closet. He also wore a light blue and lavender shirt that looked as if it was from Marcia's closet. His pants were tight up top and loose and wide downstairs.

"Hey, girls…" He stopped before Jan and Marcia. "You two still having that party?"

"You know we are, Greg."

"Groovy…" He started chuckling as if he and his brothers were planning pranks. "Just to remind you, mom said you have to come home right after school to help Alice with the cookies."

"I got the message, Greg…" Marcia responded. "Thanks…"

"Great…" Greg looked around the girls in the hall who weren't his sisters then noticed Joanie. "See you, Joanie…" He moved on.

"Groovy?" Joanie was not familiar with that expression. She watched Greg moving through the hall carrying his schoolbooks to get to class. Dodging a teacher, he turned through the doors for the main hall under a large banner that read "Spring Dance 1969" in large blue letters. 1969? She was ten years into the future! So that's why the clothes looked so horrible! She was in the future. Kids were started to express themselves. They were experimenting with fashion and clothing. They were dabbling in new and aggressive substances. As Jan and Marcia turned away wishing her well, Joanie noticed two boys hiding behind another, sucking smoke out of a pipe while down the hall an exchange of money occurred as two boys exchanged funds for addictive plants wrapped in wads of tissue. The smell was worse than the clothes. The air even had a weird taste to it. The surly around her didn't even have deodorant on them. She repulsed from the scent and wondered how a generation dabbling in dangerous substances could survive. She turned back trying to get to class and smacked into someone.

"Whoa, watch where you're your going there, Joanie…" She ran into another curly topped miscreant in tinted glasses. He looked to his friends. "You okay? You look a little spaced out."

"It's nothing…" She looked at his striped jeans and Rolling Stones T-Shirt. "I'm just…" His buddy in the plain white shirt had the weirdest hair.

"Joanie, I was just thinking…" His other buddy appeared foreign and spoke in a strange accent. "How would you like to be my date tonight to see "Star Wars" at the Multi-Plex? Eric's taking Donna, and Jackie's coming with Kelso…"

"Dude," Hyde looked at Fez. "Why you gotta block me like that? Maybe I was gonna ask Joanie." He looked to the cute brunette. "So, Joanie, how about it?"

"A date?" Joanie thought Fez was cute, but she could not deny being a bit attracted to Hyde. "Okay…" She grinned and started to turn away then looked back. "What's Star Wars?"

"What's Star Wars?" Eric reacted incredulous. "Just the greatest outer space adventure of all time! I mean…" He chuckled a bit. "You know, some people are saying I look a bit like Luke Skywalker."

"Yeah," Hyde laughed. "No one's saying that, Forman." Hyde looked back to Joanie. "So, Joanie, we'll pick you up at 6:30 in the Vista Cruiser." He paused. "You live in the big white house with the Studebaker and motorcycle in the driveway, right?"

"Yeah..." Joanie grinned dreamily over Hyde.

"I don't want to go with Fat Rhonda again…" Fez commiserated as Joanie turned round lightly giggling. She had a slumber party and a date in all of a few minutes. She so loved the Sixties! Steven and Eric's clothes weren't as bad as Greg's. Fez's shirt looked like satin with matched colors through it, and Eric wore loose clothing like a t-shirt and jeans. Several of their friends wore clothes with bands she'd never heard of… Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, Lynryd Skynyrd, Alice Cooper… It was the age of marketing. Kids were starting to wearing names of movies and their favorite bands. Casually looking up to the school sign, Joanie reacted stunned. She wasn't in the Sixties anymore!

"1978 Fall Formal Coming up." She was in the Seventies! The great garish colors fad of the Sixties was over. The clothes were looking better. The colors were not influenced from out of a marijuana pipe. Designers were getting better with the colors. The sexual revolution was starting. Cleavage was becoming popular female for teenagers. Girls showed their abdomens. People were washing again. Nearly everyone wore the name of their favorite singer or band on their chest, and one girl appeared with bare shoulders and a tight black bodice covering her breasts.

"Okay, who's going to help me with my math homework?" Kelly Bundy announced and three guys came out of nowhere, pushing the nerds out of the way. It was also the age of titles. Her classmates imposed improper and often inaccurate names on each other. There were nerds, jocks, preppies, punks and half a million other names. Alex Keaton appeared in school wearing a tie and carrying a briefcase. Popular kid Michael Seaver dodged and ran from Principal Kevin Dewitt.

"Mr. Seaver! My office!" Apparently someone had tried ordering a pizza to school. Joanie stood amazed. One girl dressed a modified wedding dress with crucifixes, necklaces and lots of jewelry to imitate a certain Pop Star Material Girl. Some of the hair was outlandish. Jeri-curls, mullets and girls with huge hair and padded shoulders in their jackets, fashion was better than the last generation. Everything had gotten bigger. The banner now said "1987 School Elections coming up." She was further into the future than before!

"Hi, Joanie…" Samantha Micelli came by with Mallory Keaton and Nicole Bradford. "We're heading to lunch. Want us to save you a seat?" It was the age of clichés. Everyone belonged to at least one, and Samantha was one of the nicest girls in school, not like some of the stuck-up princesses like Blair Warner who thought they ran the school.

"Sure…" Joanie looked back to her history class. It was empty, and she wasn't looking back. "What's in the line today?"

"Whatever it is, it's possibly not good for us." Nicole was like a lot of the health-conscious girls here. "I'm just going through the salad bar."

"We got a salad bar?" Joanie noticed Parker Lewis, the coolest kid in school. Slicked back blonde hair, cool clothes and an electronic recorder in his hand, he leaned back on the lockers watching his fellow classmates drifting by. Among them, tall huge Larry Kubiac of the school football team marched through out of place. Standing side by side with his friends, Mikey Randall and Jerry Steiner, he recorded his in-sights of the day.

"Today's log, March 18, 1987…" He grinned. "Just saw the new girl, Joanie Cunningham, a fresh, rosy-cheeked attractive brunette hanging with Samantha and the girls. I think she noticed me. I think she liked me." He paused to think. "I think I'll ask her out for hamburgers."

Jerry reached into his overcoat and with the sound of Velcro being torn apart, he pulled out a phone then a rolodeck of numbers.

"Like me to make the reservations, sir?"

Joanie strolled forward into the cafeteria and realized she had jumped another ten years into the future. A banner over the lunch lines read "1996 School Pictures Coming Up." Samantha, Nicole and Parker had vanished and she was joined by a new generation of high school kids. Bridget Hennessey walked through knowing she was the hottest girl in school with her jeans down on her hips. All-American girl Lizzie McGuire exemplified the girl local parents wanted their daughters to be while Lily Finnerty was what parents didn't want. Just a bit lazy, self-centered and out-spoken, her shrill voice screamed in annoyed embarrassment as Brad O'Keefe tried to get her attention. Hopelessly in love with her, he was also uncoordinated and less than athletic. Joanie turned around absorbing all the details. The clothes, the hair, the egos… it all felt right to her. She wanted to be a part of it. She liked the music. She wanted to hear more of it.

"Excuse me…" She stopped at a table. "Who's that you're listening to?"

"Hannah Montana." Lily Truscott answered. "She's only like the greatest singer in the world!"

"Oh, Lily…" Miley Stewart sitting next to her blushed a bit. "That's not necessary…" She paused to enjoy the praise then turned insecure. "Better than Kelly Clarkson?"

"Better!"

"Who's Kelly Clarkson" Joanie asked.

"Kelly Clarkson…" Lily was surprised to hear Joanie had never heard of the entertainer. Joanie drew a blank.

"American Idol…"

Joanie still looked confused.

"Over five million votes…."

"Wow!" Joanie turned and chuckled a bit to hide her unfamiliarity with the star. There was so much more music that had come around in the last forty years. Teenagers were dominating both the music and TV industries, and becoming celebrities. Commercials plied the youth of today with cultural and teenage references. Fashion had stabilized, and nothing was outrageous for attention. Intercontinental cuisine was available across the globe. One girl's lunch was sushi from Japan, while one boy ate a spicy Greek dish from a local restaurant. Phil Diffy looked up to Joanie passing his table and grinned. Joanie grinned back to him, and turned toward the lunch line just as everything went dark. The multitude of voices had ceased as well. Something had pulled the power.

She found herself in a deserted cafeteria. The tables and chairs were gone. The kitchen doors were locked and the shadows of bars blocked the outside windows. The school was empty, and the shadows and shades of the last forty years were gone. Joanie found herself surrounded by silence and darkness.

"Hello?" She called out. "Anyone there?" She raced back the way she had come. Her feet sounding on the floor of the main hall, she raced down the hall to her classroom. The rooms were either deserted or locked up. The floor was covered in trash. Her only lights were sunlight streaming through from the outside. The school had been abandoned. What year was it? Where was she?

"Hello?" Someone called to her. She spin round and saw two guys, but they didn't look like students. They looked like urban explorers or something. Maybe they were thieves or maintenance men. One of them shone his flashlight in her face.

"Who the hell are you?" Sam Winchester looked to his brother, Dean, then back to this girl. "What are you doing here?"

"I – I – I…" Joanie stuttered a minute. "I'm looking for someone…" She looked around. "What happened to this school?"

"It closed down in 1998." Dean answered. "No one is supposed to be in here."

"What are you doing in here?" Joanie asked.

"Well, if you gotta know…" Sam responded. "We're looking for a ghost."

"A ghost?" Joanie didn't take them seriously.

"Yeah," Dean reacted more levelheaded. "Back in the Fifties some girl named Joanie vanished here." He looked around with the light. "They say her ghost returns and scares off workmen trying to convert the place into an office building."

"What?" She stopped smiling.

"What's your name?" Sam asked.

"What's today's date?" Joanie shuddered as if someone had walked over her grave.

"What?" Now, Sam was the one confused.

"The date!"

"March 18, 2010…"

Joanie shuddered back from the two brothers. Was it true? Was she really in the future? Was this really what Jefferson High School was going to become? A tired and worn out structure fighting demolition to be converted into something else? She flashed back upon her parents and friends. Where were they? Were they alive? Her hands terrified to her face, she pushed through them and charged for the main hallway through the school. Sliding on her heel on the dingy dark floor, she ran out of the school as fast as her heels could carry her into a weed-covered front property surrounded by a chain-link fence. The once neat parking lot was faded and damaged with potholes and weeds growing through the curb. The surrounding homes were familiar but different; the cars strange and sleeker like space ships. Racing down the sidewalk, the daughter of the Fifties went in search of her lost past.


	5. Chapter 5

5

All her favorite places were gone. McKay's dress shop was a Starbuck's coffee station, and the Roadside Diner was now a sushi place. Her father's hardware store now sold cellular phones, and the church on the corner was gone, replaced by a McDonalds Restaurant. Her past was erased. Her life and presence in this town was non-existent. There had to be a trace of her family and friends left behind here. Joanie wondered about Fonzie's Garage. Surely that still existed, but it was located on the other side of town, and her feet were already hurting her. She stopped to catch her breath on the bus bench at the corner of Delaware and Tenth Street, at least that still existed. Dropping to grieve and try to figure out what to do, she felt the tears slid down her face, her heart pounding in her chest and the grief swelling and taking over her mind.

She heard a motorcycle coming toward her and jumped to her feet, but it wasn't Fonzie. This guy was older and thinner and wore a silver helmet on his head to protect it. Fonzie never wore helmets. Riding a restored 1978 Knucklehead with a dual exhaust system, he cruised to a stop at the stop sign near Joanie, left his engine idling and pulled out his cell phone.

"Frank, where are you?" He looked around. "I got turned around. Where are you?" He suddenly noticed Joanie looking at his motorcycle and him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm lost." Joanie barely answered.

"Need a ride?" Mike offered his extra helmet. "I'll drop you off where you need to get to." He just wanted a cute girl to ride his cycle with him and make him look good.

"Can you take me to Arnold's Drive-in?"

"Where?"

"Arnold's…" Joanie pulled the helmet on. "The burger and fries place on the corner of Lake and Main Street across from the cleaners."

"There's no cleaners on Main Street."

"The drive-in where everyone hangs out."

He looked at her confused again.

"Just drop me off at the Methodist Church on the corner."

"Methodist?" Mike started his cycle. "I thought it was Baptist?"

"Whatever."

"Get on…" Joanie slipped on behind him and pulled the helmet on her head. At least girls still got to ride motorcycles. It took off quickly and carried her through traffic, past cars and zipping past whole sections of town. The old Simmons house had been restored into a museum, Jenny Piccolo's house had been rebuilt and remodeled and Main Street had been widened. No one parked along the curb anymore. Three lanes of traffic were now four, and the stoplights had been replaced for modern models. Everything had been updated, restored, rebuilt or replace. This was not her hometown anymore. Progress, renovation and innovation had replaced style, classicism and tradition. So much had happened to Milwaukee in over fifty years, and the biggest shock was coming at her. When she finally strolled up on Milwaukee's 2815 Lake Avenue, she failed to recognize the drive-in restaurant where she had spent so much of her youth. The parking lot with the roller skating waitresses, hot rods and congregating schoolmates was no longer alive with social activity. The shape of the building was there, but the Fifties neon bluish green coloring had been paneled over. The interior was decorated with plate glass windows, wood-paneled walls and a long buffet style food bar. The teen hangout was now a family restaurant. The pennants on the walls were gone, the booths were replaced with wooden benches and tables separated by fake flowers and waitress stations. It was no longer a high school hangout for teenagers; it was a family restaurant with a tavern-style like bar in the corner and a buffet set out along the front of the building. Instead of high school students crowded into booths, it was a place for families to bring their kids, for retired couples to eat out and where businessmen met with clients. Her past was gone; it was erased. Teenagers no longer dominated the media; they hid in the corners of it watching reality and the world go by on tiny windows in expensive computer toys and handheld accessories. The innocence of the Fifties had been replaced in over fifty years by a complacent society. Young girls were now struggling mothers, young punks sold death in powder and plant form on the streets and little kids were living in a life without imagination nor having to think. The age of the greasy-haired leather-jacket street gang was over, replaced instead by the teenaged drug-addled thin white t-shirt future terrorists violating the sidewalk businesses and lowering the property values. Warren Webber had seen the differences too, but he had lived through these changing times. The boy once known as Potsie had settled into late middle aged and facing retirement now managing the place. He checked the receipts, instructed the waitresses, took care of his dining patrons and looked to the future. He was heavyset now with gray and silver white hair. His face was fuller, no longer the lean handsome youth he had been in high school. His blue eyes no longer sparkled with the songs he once sang as a boy. He was a struggling divorced father looking to spend the weekend with his daughter and grandson. Joanie stood watching him as he ran the cash register and swiped a credit card through the register. Joanie stood amazed at the invention.

"Just a minute…" He looked briefly at her and failed to recognize her. He turned and grinned warmly to his departing guests then picked up silverware from off the hostess stand. "Will this be for one?"

"Potsie?"

"Potsie?" He reacted confused. "No one's called me that in…. Joanie?" He looked a bit closer at her and his mind shifted back into his memories. It couldn't be. It just couldn't. Richie's little sister, here? She was still young, shapely and beautiful. How was that possible? She hadn't aged a day in over fifty years. She had not aged a day since he had last seen her in 1957!

"Joanie?" He was stunned, almost enough to stumble backward in shock, but he remained upright enough to have one of the waitresses take care of his guests. Warren Webber, businessman, former high school football and basketball player and weekend crooner, felt like an old man before his best friend's sister looking all like the teenager from his memories. How was this possible?!

"Potsie…" Joanie looked back in shock and subdued fear. He had grown old and fat, not overly obese, but flabby and out of shape. His dark hair was mottled with gray. His face was lined with wrinkles and freckled with spots. She looked around Arnold's and back at him. "You're here. You're the only person I have been able to find…" She fretted with over fifty years of lost memories. "What happened to this place?!"

"Arnold's burned down in 1961." Potsie revealed. "Fonzie and Al rebuilt it as a family place afterward. Worshams bought us out in 1987."

"Where's Fonzie?"

"He's around from time to time." Potsie answered. "You know how busy state senators are."

"State senator?" Joanie reacted in disbelief. "Potsie, you got to help me! I've been slipping through time, and I can't stop it! I keep stopping in ten year intervals; I want to go home!"

"What?" He stood stunned. He didn't want to believe it, but she looked so young, just as she was when he last saw her. Cute, rosy-cheeked and shapely like the young beauty he recalled. "What do you have? Some kind of Delorean? A Hot Tub Time Machine?"

"What?"

"Never mind… those are movies…"

"Where are my parents?" She asked the question.

"Joanie…" Gesturing at her to sit at the nearest booth, he slid in across from her and looked at her young beautiful face. He spoke clearly and solemnly. "You father died in 1983; your mother in 1990. Richie and Ralph are in Hollywood making movies. Jenny's now a grandmother. I'm a grandfather. You missed so much."

"Chuck?" Her eyes were filling with tears.

"Chuck retired in Hawaii after Viet Nam."

"Viet Nam?"

"That was another war…" He wondered how she could not know that then gestured to one of the waitresses to bring Joanie a Pepsi to drink. "Oh, wow… you really have been traveling in time… Richie was right. He told me about the laptop, the I-Pod, the cash… You had all of it years before they were invented…" He paused out of disbelief. "How is that all possible?"

"I don't know…" Tears fell down the girl's face. "I don't even know how I got them. They…." She paused trying to think. "They were just there. It was like… they were in my head…" She had sobered herself into being analytical. "It's as if… I just always knew what they were."

"Joanie…" Potsie looked at her as her drink arrived at the table. "When you vanished, all your parents remembered were that you were obsessed with the future." He looked across at her. "They somehow believed you had managed to run off for it." He chuckled. "It sounded crazy at the time, but… I guess they were right, because here you are. Is it really all you wanted?"

"I liked the stuff, I liked the music." Joanie confessed and sipped her cold soda again. "I never wanted to leave home." She looked up to Potsie as the last person she could trust. "I want to go home. Not just home, but… back to my time. Back to 1957…"

"How do you want to do that?" Potsie tried to think of her as Richie's little sister and not a friend of his granddaughter. "Jump a few more decades until time machines are possible?"

"This all started here…." Joanie rationalized it all. "That song… that song I sang with you guys…"

"Where were you before that?" Potsie asked. "Do you remember?"

"Of course, I remember." Joanie sipped her drink again. "It was just a few days ago for me. I was at school." She paused. "School... I never carried a backpack home from school before! It started at school!"

"At the Old Jefferson High building…." Potsie gasped. "Joanie, then that's why you stopped going into the future! It's being renovated. Whatever they're changing is going to stop you from going further into the future otherwise you could be telling this all to my grandkids." She looked at him with terrified fear in her face.

"I've got to get you back there." He rose quickly and had Marcie the assistant manager cover for him. "I've got to get you home… Man, I feel like Doc Brown…"

"Who?" Joanie did not get that movie reference. Potsie pointed out his silver Dodge Neon in the parking lot of the church next door and unlocked the passenger side door for her. The automatic seat belt startled her, and the interior made her think of a space ship, but if there was any chance she could get home she had to take it. It was dusk, but almost dark after the traffic let them get back to the school. Her old school looked haunted behind the trees and under the gray sky. Potsie had not driven back here in years; the new Jefferson High was on the site of the old tire factory at the other end of Main Street. He pulled up close to the old student parking lot.

"Joanie," He looked back at her getting out of the car. "You do know if you make it back that I won't recall any of this. Your parents will be alive, Ralph, Richie and Fonzie will be home, and you'll live through everything normally. Just don't tell us what you saw… let us make our own futures with you in it…"

"I will…"

"But if you don't get back…." He looked around hoping what he was suggesting wouldn't happen. "I'll be at the Starbucks on the corner. I'll take care of you."

"What's a Starbucks?"

"You'll find it." He grinned one last time and pulled away. Joanie watched him drive away for all of three seconds and looked back to the school. Tall, white and abandoned with darkened black windows, it might as well be a giant skull looking back at her. The perimeter of the front veranda where students once gathered and socialized was fenced off and festered with weeds. She thought first about climbing over it, then saw the barbwire and changed her mind. Where had she broken through? The gate was in back near the hall to the cafeteria. It was getting dark a bit faster and the streetlights were coming on. The lights cast her shadow into different directions. She hastened past the old teacher's parking lot and lightly jogged to the rear of the building. A light breeze moved the clouds over her had as she searched for the opening. Hastening around the corner, she found it where she had left it in an area strewn with trash and discarded cigarettes. She slipped through the opening in the gate by pressing herself through it until she was on the other side. Under the nighttime sky of eternal stars and a solitary aircraft crossing over, she ran up to the rear exit of the school and pounded at it. She had to get back inside her old school. If there was any chance of her getting home, this was it. She had to get inside. Looking around, she noticed the crumbling concrete and pulled up a piece of the broken sidewalk. At that moment, a police car turned the corner, and its inhabitants noticed her shadow racing along the building toward the cafeteria. Moments later, the sound of breaking glass filled the area.

"Barney…" The officer riding along looked at his partner. "It looks like we got ourselves another bored teenager looking for something to do."

"You'd think, Andge, that with everything in town that they'd have something better to do!" His skinny partner commented.

"Well, let's drive around and pick them up." They ignored switching on their lights to surprise the young lady, but by now, Joanie had pulled her up through the window of Mrs. Moore's Home Economics class. The room was empty and filled with dusty discarded desks and an old flag pushed to the corner. The door to the room had been taken off the hinges, but the end of the hall to the cafeteria had been locked off against her. She heard the brakes of the patrol car squeal outside and a car door slam closed. The voices of the two officers followed. Joanie was going to have to go upstairs and come down the front stairway and elude them while doing that. Her sneakers squealed on the grimy floor and rushed past the hall to the gym. Her feet pounding the stairs, she nearly stumbled on paint cans and a tarp on the stairwell, but on top, she forced herself into the sophomore hall. This was where she had spent so much time gossiping with Jenny Piccolo or changing clothes with Vanessa Danvers in the restroom. Downstairs, the two officers were exploring the downstairs near the cafeteria with flashlights. They heard Joanie running the length of the school toward them over their heads. They'd split up and wait for her at the bottom of the stairs. Racing past the water fountain outside Miss Mansfield's room, she suddenly stopped and hesitated after seeing something in the room. Taking a few steps back, Joanie retreated back to look again. There was one light on in the room and it was on her old desk. Her backpack was still in the history room waiting for her. Lighted by the solitary illumination in the darkened school, she found her laptop in it; her I-Pod left on the desk exactly as she had left it fifty years ago. Her feet carried her nervously up toward it. Angry anxiety filled her senses.

"It's all your fault…" She gasped. "I never wanted you… you ruined my life!" She grabbed it all as flashlight beams came up the stairwells. "You're not mine!" She hurled the book bag down the hall, but the I-Pod and several fifty-dollars printed in 2008 fell to her feet. She scooped it all up and dumped it into the trashcan by the water fountain.

"I don't want it!" Joanie fell to her feet and sat huddled on the floor. Tears started falling down her face. "I want to go home! Please take me back! I don't want to live in the future!" Officer Costello's flashlight hit her face.

"Young lady, are you on drugs?"

"Don't touch me!" Joanie screamed. "Leave me alone! I just want to go home!"

"I'll get you home… trust me." He switched on his radio. "We need an ambulance. Subject is on drugs…" The classroom suddenly lit up with lights next to him. He felt a small breeze on the back of his neck and felt a cold breeze rushing up through the stairwell. A powerful supernatural event was happening. The hallway lights came on as the wind pouring through the school tossed around paper, trash and debris. Beer cans and junk food wrappers left behind by other vandals skirted down along the floors, and coming down the hall, something was tearing open the lockers one by one on each side of the hallway. Joanie heard a million voices in unison coming through the school as lockers continued flying open. It was coming closer and closer. Officer Andrew Costello gasped in shock and wondered where his partner was. A strange force pulled Joanie from him and pushed her hard to the wall. He reached to catch her, but there was nothing there to catch. She had vanished. Had he just encountered the ghost of the high school? Officer Barney Abbott was just now coming to catch up with him behind this interior tornado. Costello would just tell him the girl had escaped.

Dropping to the floor, Joanie opened her eyes to the lights in her eyes and saw her classmates staring down at her. Jenny Piccolo and Vanessa were by her side holding her head. Scott McFarlane watched from the crowd as students mulled past the on-lookers. Her head was throbbing, her mind was fading between unconsciousness and awake. Where was she? Most importantly, when was she?! Miss Mansfield was there as the school nurse and two Jefferson High football players carried a stretcher from the gym to collect her. Confused and distraught, Joanie struggled to stay awake.

"What happened?" Her teacher, Marilyn Mansfield, asked her classmates.

"It was an accident!" Jan insisted.

"Yeah…" Hyde looked at Jan then back to Mrs. Mansfield. "She just tapped Joanie on the shoulder, and she spun around and whacked her head on the locker." Hyde looked away a moment. "I guess we kind of scared her or something."

"Well, be careful the next time you tap a person on the shoulder." Marilyn warned them, and walked alongside Joanie to the nurse's office. Crying and rambling incoherently, Joanie just kept asking to go home again to people she never saw. In the crowded and concerned hallway, Hyde and Jan took one last look at each other and parted down different halls. Hyde turned left at Classroom 78, and Jan turned right at Classroom 67. Hearing his sister had accidentally hit her head and was delirious, Richie came racing down the stairs from the senior's wing just short of missing Hyde as he hurried to the nurse in the main office to check on his sister.

Twenty years later, Donna Pinciotti turned the hall from math class and bent over yet another water fountain, the fingers of her left hand pulling her long red hair back over her ear to keep them from getting wet. Her school wasn't Jefferson High School in Milwaukee; it was Point Place High School in another city in the south of the state near Green Bay. What forces that had overlapped space and time were dwindling and fighting to gain strength again. They waned, encroached and advanced again. Donna felt a chill on the back of her neck. Her eyes turned and looked to the waste can by her.

"Donna…" Jackie Burkhart was one of the hottest girls in school. About five-foot-two of brunette effeminate energy with big brown eyes, perfect skin and a nice figure in expensive clothes, she was part of Donna's circle of friends. She was the on and off again girlfriend of Michael Kelso, one of the best friends of Eric Forman, Donna's boyfriend. Although their connection was indirect, Jackie considered Donna one of the few people she allowed to hang with her.

"I need some help." She explained herself. "Michael wants to take me to the movies but not to see the movie. He just wants to fool around, so get Eric, Joanie, Fez and the guys and join us. He won't make a move with everyone there."

"Right!" Donna was all out for messing with Kelso. "Wait… who's Joanie?"

"Who?" Jackie reacted and thought back. "I… I don't know. Why did I say that name?" She asked herself. Donna was confused as well.

"Forget it…" She shrugged it off. "Look…. Will you be there?"

"A chance to mess around with Kelso?" Donna grinned with a laugh. "Definitely! I love the way his voice gets higher when he gets angry." They shared an evil laugh and Donna turned back toward her math class. Jackie pressed her finger to activate the water fountain, pulled her fingers back through her hair as Donna had before her and took a sip of water. When she did that, she heard music playing. Her round brown eyes looked toward the waste can. Standing up straight, her hand reached on it's own and she plucked out the device she had heard. It seemed to be some very small form of a transistor radio. She held the earpiece to her head.

"_Can't Read my… Can't Read My, You Know You Can't Read My_…" The song was quickly getting into her head and helping her sing along with it…. "_Poker face, Can't read my, Can't read my… Poker Face_…." She saved the device for herself and turned toward the cafeteria with the new style of music dancing through her head thirty years before that of her classmates…

"_Pohk-Pohk-Pohk-Pohk-Pohk- My Poker Face…."_

"They say time is like is like a river…" The voice of Rod Serling spoke over these events and Jackie headed away. "It starts from it's source and flows outward in all directions… sometimes flowing into alternate realities and different possiblities. Maybe this is one of those alternate worlds, or perhaps, just possibly, it also has the tendency to flow back on itself when something impedes its own course. Let's file this one under "Time" in that great expanse of reality which we know as… The Twilight Zone."

End


End file.
